“That was a very strange and unusual night for me,” said the San Diego native, who performs here with Heart Monday, Aug. 26, at the SDSU Open Air Theatre.

“It was a great honor, but I did feel a bit disembodied and like I was watching it from above,” she elaborated. “That part surprised me. It was a never-to-be-forgotten night, but it was definitely very surreal to be one of the ones honored like that.”

The all-star jam session that concluded the induction ceremony at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles also seemed a bit surreal.

The only two women participating in the jam were Ann and her guitar-playing sister, Nancy, (The two, who helped launch Heart in 1973, spent part of their childhoods in and around Camp Pendleton, where their Marine officer father was stationed several times.)

The Wilsons were joined for the induction ceremony jam by fellow 2013 Rock Hall honorees Chuck D. of Public Enemy and all three members of Rush. Also playing alongside them were Creedence Clearwater Revival founder John Fogerty, Dave Grohl and Taylor Hawkins of Foo Fighters, Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell, blues-rock buzz artist Gary Clark Jr., Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello and rapper DMC of Run-DMC.

Together, the all-star cast rocked out on Cream’s amped-up version of the Robert Johnson blues classic “Crossroads,” with Wilson belting out the second verse. She was preceded on vocals by Clark and followed by Cornell, Fogerty and Grohl, with a series of high-octane guitar solos in between.

“It’s not likely anybody who was there will get on the stage with Rush again, because they’re so complete (on their own), so that was a very great moment,” said Ann Wilson, speaking from her Seattle home. “ ‘Crossroads’ was selected by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame people, mostly because of all the guitar players (onstage). It provided a (vehicle) for a million guitar solos!”

Wilson was exaggerating. But the fact that she and her sister were the only two women on a stage filled by men was a telling sign about how few female rockers have been inducted into the Hall of Fame.

That made the inclusion of Heart a doubly well-deserved tribute to the band, which the Wilsons have tirelessly led for more than four decades. At the induction ceremony, the sisters reunited with the group’s original lineup for the first time in 34 years to play “Crazy On You,” Heart’s 1976 breakthrough hit.

Then the current lineup of Heart, which features former San Diego guitarist Craig Bartock, came out to perform “Barracuda.”

“He is amazing,” Wilson said of Bartock, Heart’s lead guitarist for the past decade. “You are never going to find a person with a more encyclopedic musical brain. He has been able to come into these songs, from the ’70s and all these different eras of Heart, and make the solos his own — and make them work for us. He’s a great friend and a really fine musician.”

Apart from the Wilson sisters, Heart’s lineups over the years have otherwise been all-male, with the exception of the current edition, which features keyboardist Debbie Shair (who came on board in 2004). The dramatic increase in the number of women in rock since Heart’s ascension is something Ann Wilson takes considerable pride in having helped to nurture.

“Back then, radio stations would not play more than one female artist per hour,” she said. “At the time, female artists were considered novelties. So, if they were playing Joan Baez, or Tina Turner, or a disco diva, you were out of luck and had to wait another hour (to get played).

“I think that women have come a really long way since then. They had to carve a whole new parallel universe of rock, next to the universe of rock men, and I don’t think a lot of young people today know that. They think it was always cool for women to be in rock. No, it wasn’t. Rock was a man’s game, designed to (help men) get girls.”

And what does Wilson make of the current glut of female pop-music bimbos, who manage to simultaneously give a bad name to pop and bimbos?

“I have strong feelings about bimbo-pop, which does not represent any forward moment in the women’s movement or for women in music,” she replied.

“I think that, a lot of the time, young up-and-coming women in music — and their publicists and managers — confuse sexuality with power. (The result is) you have the bimbo-pop thing and little chicks saying: ‘I’m a feminist!’ And they really don’t understand the word.

"There are other women that totally get personal power, women like Adele, Lady Gaga, Brittany Howard (of Alabama Shakes) and Lucinda Williams. Those are all really talented women, who don’t feel they need to get undressed and do a pole dance, and who have more than one subject they can sing about.”

Ann and Nancy Wilson's love of music took root in early 1964 at their grandmother's house in La Jolla, where the sisters watched in rapt attention as The Beatles' made their U.S. television debut on "The Ed Sullivan Show."

"We spent time living in Camp Pendleton, Fallbrook, Carlsbad and San Diego, so it was a very important area for us (growing up)," Ann Wilson recalled.

"I was not old enough to go to concerts then, but we sure listened to (radio station) KCBQ a lot and got all excited about what they were playing. We'd be listening while we were sitting by my grandmother's pool down there and it was pretty cool."

The Wilson sisters have been musical partners for nearly their entire lives, a fact that enables them to communicate almost telepathically, on stage and off.

Is it possible, after all these years, for the two to surprise each other when Heart is performing?

"Yeah, we do," Ann Wilson replied with a hearty laugh.

"I mean, Nancy is a beautiful woman and really talented. But what people don't know about her is that she's a total comedian and has this really sharp sense of humor. And, sometimes, she'll pull something on stage that will just crack me up and throw me completely off. And I love that, because it's good to be thrown off and have somebody wake you up (on stage), especially because we have a sense of humor that goes back to our childhood that nobody would understand.